LOS ANGELES - Ford Motor Co. notched a major "lemon law" victory Thursday when a judge reversed a $23,155 jury verdict in a trial he presided over last December.
After hearing post-trial motions on July 8, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte, Jr. granted Ford's move for judgment as a matter of law in the case of plaintiffs Yvonne and Salvador Quintero. He found that evidence their lawyers submitted was insufficient "to establish that Ford failed to repair or replace their vehicle after a reasonable number of repair opportunities."
As one of more than 1,000 cases consolidated at the Central District of California involving allegedly defective DPS6 dual-clutch powershift transmissions in Fiesta and Focus vehicles, the Quintero case was the second to go to trial on claims under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act - the state's lemon law. The Quinteros alleged breach of express warranty and breach of implied warranty, and at trial they were awarded $7,718.61 in damages and $15,437.20 in civil penalties.
In Birotte's Aug. 13 order, he also denied as moot Ford's motion for a new trial - in which the auto maker argued that plaintiffs' counsel engaged in "pervasive misconduct."
Plaintiffs' counsel on the Quintero docket includes attorneys at the Knight Law Group and Altman Law Group in Los Angeles, as well as the Rosner Barry and Babbit firm in San Diego.
Regarding the Quintero evidence, Birotte held that to establish a Song-Beverly express warranty claim, a plaintiff must show that they presented their vehicle for repair of a "nonconformity" to the manufacturer at least twice and that those repair efforts failed, "that is, that the nonconformity persisted after a minimum of two repair presentations."
He found that the Quinteros presented evidence of "potentially" three visits to Ford dealerships, "however only one of these visits properly counts as a repair opportunity."
In a second visit, Birotte found that plaintiffs did not present evidence establishing that work done on their vehicle failed to bring the vehicle into conformity with the express warranty. And, testimony of a third visit was insufficient for two reasons, he wrote.
"First, Plaintiffs failed to disclose this repair opportunity during discovery, and instead disclosed it for the first time during trial," Birotte wrote. "In their opposition, Plaintiffs do not deny that they failed to disclose this purported repair during discovery, thus conceding this point. The Court admitted this testimony, which was error.
"Mr. Quintero’s testimony about this undocumented visit to Bob Wondries is insufficient for another reason: it was too vague, speculative, and contradictory to constitute “substantial evidence.”
Ford and other auto makers have been fighting a growing number of lemon lawsuits in California courts for more than five years.
In June, Ford settled approximately 760 multi-district litigation cases with the law firm Consumer Legal Remedies (CLR) of Beverly Hills.